Friday, July 27, 2012

Just out riding around watching the storms rolling in tonight (again). Grabbed the camera and took a few quick and dirty hand held shots with the OM-D and 14mm lens. This one I kind of like with the lightning lit clouds providing enough light to give a hint of a foreground. (Olympus OM-D with Pany 14mm lens - ISO 800, 4s @ f3.2.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

I can't believe it. We are having severe storms again today. This is getting to be our daily entertainment. I am reading about the severe drought affecting so much of this country and it is hard to believe. We have had 10 inches of rain just this month. The first pic is just a warning that popped up on TV a while ago. The second pic was shot off my back porch looking up using my Canon S90 point and shoot. The pic is straight out of the camera with no manipulation. The clouds looked really scary as this storm was moving in.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Yet another day of storms. This is a shot I took about 10:30 this evening while standing outside my Jeep in an open field (I was maybe asking for trouble). The picture is lightning striking my Power Tower and charging my underground capacitors which should give me a years worth of electricity. I was playing with the Olympus OM-D (E-M5, whatever) with the kit zoom and the WCON-P01 wide angle converter. It converts the wide end of the kit zoom from 28mm (equivalent) to about 22mm. The photo is cropped so you can't really see the wide angle. This shot was ISO800, f3.5 at 2 seconds.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

This is looking out across my back yard in the, yes, pouring rain today. It has rained heavily every day for over a week now. The good part? The heat is not as bad as it was. The bad part? The mosquitoes are getting real bad. If you look real hard just to the right of low center on the picture you can see the lone set of five flowers that I photographed yesterday.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Storm after storm has rolled through here for days now. At one point the sun popped out and I saw this one set of flowers blooming across the back yard. I grabbed the camera and ran out to get some pics before it started raining again. (Olympus OM-D with Panasonic 20/1.7 lens - shot at ISO 200, 1/200s @ f7.1)

Thursday, July 19, 2012

The first pic is one of my Buff Orpingtons and the second pic just barely captures all 8 of my chickens. There are two Barred Rocks (black and white stripes), three Buff Orpingtons (the gold ones), two Easter Eggers (the mutts) and one white chicken that I don't know what it is. The Buff Orpingtons are the most docile and friendly and are wonderful chickens. The Barred Rocks were super friendly as chicks but they are cooling off and the others don't like to be touched at all. It won't be long, about another 6 weeks, before they start laying eggs. There will be a lot of eggs in our diet then.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

With all the heat and rain the frogs are coming out in droves. Around here we have several sets of life which make their presence known. Starting in the late spring we have mosquitoes and fireflies, then in the summer it is mosquitoes, spiders and frogs with everything tapering off in the fall. You don't want to walk around in the dark without being careful right now as this is a big spider year with giant spider webs popping up between things after it gets dark. I was out next to the garage tonight after dark, making sure the chickens were settled in, when I almost stepped on this little guy. There are lots of frogs this year up around the house. This one is a little odd as most of them are dark green.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Well, I received a new Google (Asus) Nexus 7 Tablet today and I absolutely love it. Just like my Samsung Galaxy S2 ended up replacing my IPhone 4S, I am sure this Nexus 7 will replace my use of the IPad. Granted, my IPad is the original and not the newest version, but the performance of this Nexus 7 surpasses the IPad in every way except screen size. I love the Android OS and the Nexus 7 comes with the most recent 'Jelly Bean' version. It is lightning fast and the web browser (Chrome) is probably 3 times faster than my IPad when hitting the same sites. I really like the 7 inch screen as it is small and light enough to easily hold one handed for extended periods (reading) and the small size is much more conducive to just grabbing and throwing in a bag when heading out.The second picture shows my IPad, the Nexus 7 then the Galaxy S2 phone. The Nexus screen is exactly as tall as the IPad is wide (in portrait). If you use the Google Cloud for all your stuff like I do the Nexus 7 is especially nice as it syncs the device with your Google account and gives you immediate access to all your docs, pics, music, calendars and whatever else without having to store it on your device. The cloud is the direction everything is heading although I still carry some stuff around with me for those disconnected times (and of course I also keep my pics on 3 separate hard drives located in three different places as a backup). For $200 this thing is a steal!

Friday, July 13, 2012

Weather seems to be the main topic around here lately. If it is not record setting heat then it is big storms and torrential rain. This is a picture taken about noon today just before the bottom dropped out. It looks like it will be back to high heat/humidity and no rain within a couple of days. I will be glad when this summer is over so I can start getting some things done outside again.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

It was a dark and stormy night (and day). As Bill Beebe posted recently in his blog, I decided to get out and take advantage of the great even lighting on this rainy day and get in some 'shutter therapy', something I need to do a lot more of. Most of my photos recently have just been 'snapshots' and are not what I would consider worth looking at more than once. I really need to change that. Today's first photo of a couple of Vinca flowers was taken in the rain with an Olympus OM-D camera with a Nikon 55mm Micro-Nikkor lens at f2.8. The second photo was taken with the same camera but with the Panasonic/Leica 1.4/25mm lens at f8.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

After a week of near 100 degree weather with no rain the weather finally broke. The last two days it has cooled down and we have had some torrential rain. Last night local roads and highways were flooded and I had a steady stream of water coming down the fireplace inside the house.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

It started out scorching hot again today. I showed 99 degrees around 2pm and I was outside adjusting the fan in the chicken coop and misting things down. Then around 3:30 the storms started to roll through. This was taken out the front door just before the last line moved through at 5pm. The good thing is that it cooled things down. The thermometer shows 82 degrees now which is nice.